aring over their human
ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain their forms as
_wani_ or crocodiles.

The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian motive,
transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de Visser, p.
142), and, I may add, also to America.

[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of the
Liverpool Museum has kindly called my attention to a remarkable series
of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were obtained in
the course of excavations made by Mr. T. W. F. Gann, M.R.C.S., an
officer in the Medical Service of British Honduras (see his account of
the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a
pottery figure of a _wani_ or _makara_ in the form of an alligator,
equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia);
and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to
represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the
Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, a human
head is seen emerging from the creature's throat. It affords a most
definite and convincing demonstration of the sources of American
culture.]

The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the
pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom
of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy
enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the
logical result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the
influence of which upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances
which was responsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great
scientific theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn
played a great, if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief
in a sky world, or heaven.

[137: "Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in America,"
_Nature_, Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and Jan. 27,
1916, p. 593.]

[138: "History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.]

[139: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archeologie Americaine," 1912, p. 319.]

[140: "Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," _Papers of
the Peabody Museum_, vol. iv., 1904.]

[141: _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.]

[142: "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschrifte